Song of the Swans

About the Book

The famous Kazakh playwright Dulat Issabekov celebrates his 75th Anniversary in October 2017. To this Diamond Jubilee we’d like to offer the readers a selection of his popular plays: Song of the Swans, the Actress, A Man on a Mission, the Transit Passenger and the Monument. His play ‘The Transit Passenger’ was presented successfully to the British audience in London, 2014 and 2015. ‘The Transit Passenger’ is a play about life, about growing older, and it is a play about the anxiety of being left alone with your memories. By the time when I saw the play in the original Kazakh language, beautifully acted - even though I didn’t understand a word of Kazakh - I had tears in my eyes… Baroness Alison Suttie

About the Author

Dulat Issabekov has dozens of novellas to his name, around forty short stories and a novel entitled “The Revolt”. He has also written over twenty works for the stage. Issabekov’s works have been published and re-published in Moscow on several occasions. Some of his novellas and stories have been translated into English, German, Hungarian, Czech and Chinese. Plays by this writer are performed in theatres throughout Kazakhstan. They have also been staged in Turkey, Russian Federation: Saint Petersburg and Omsk; Bulgaria, Tadzhikistan and Bashkiria (RF). In 2012 a whole international festival was devoted exclusively to his work under the title “The World of Issabekov”. Dulat Issabekov was the first writer to be awarded the State Prize of Independent Kazakhstan, the prize of Kazakhstan’s Pen Club and the Platinum Prize of the independent organization “Tarlan”. Feature films have been made of Issabekov’s works “Gaukhar Tas”, “Sagebrush”, “Far and Away” and “Lottery” and also a documentary about his life and work entitled “The World of Issabekov” (2012). He received an International Chingiz Aitmatov Award for the Life Achievement in 2014 at the House of Lords, British Parliament, UK.